Author's Note: Final Portfolio

The only piece in my portfolio that does not match up with the grading rubric is the pre-writing. I did both pre-writes on MS word because I was sick the day we did it on the blog.

My overall topic or theme for this portfolio was about teen truancy and the daytime curfew that was implemented in order to solve the problem. The solution to this problem, which I focused on in all three pieces, was the parents taking responsibility for their children.
My letter to the editor takes a very honest approach and while I agreed with some of the author's arguments, I made some of my own. I believe it was very direct and did not dance around my opinion, but rather stated it clearly. This was the one piece that I had a problem cutting down and I was a little bit over the word count cut off, however I could not pull things out without the whole argument falling apart.
The OP ED piece is my favorite piece that I have written. Although in my first draft it may have seemed like I was attacking the parents, I changed that in the second draft to take a softer approach and pull in the target audience before I started telling them what they were doing wrong. I also tried to calm down my opinion because I realized it may drive some readers away from my editorial because it is too strong and it would make them uncomfortable.
My humor piece took me a while to think of because I am particularly uncomfortable with writing in this way. I decided on the Dr. Seuss parody because it was a light-hearted way to approach a serious subject. I didn't change anything from the original draft to the final draft because I really liked my original and I didn't receive any comments on how to change it that I thought would make it better. Again, in this piece I focus on the parents and how they should be held responsible for their children.

Overall, I am pleased with my portfolio. I feel like I put in a lot of work and spent more time editing the OP ED and LTTE than I have on previous portfolios so I hope that works in my favor and that I caught everything.